A Spiritual Practice

(I read this great article on www.grammy.com about Kirtan – they interviewed GuruGanesha for the article.  Very cool!  Check it out!  – Karan)

Yoga’s music movement is gaining popularity while broadening horizons and sales

This article taken from GRAMMY.com
Alan di Perna

While many sectors of the music industry are learning to live with decreased sales and diminished expectations, one niche music market that’s remarkably robust is the growing yoga/chant genre. The expanding popularity of this genre is directly tied to the explosion of hatha yoga over the past decade, with yoga studios springing up in a number of cities across the United States and Europe.

“It’s part of a whole cultural movement that includes yoga, meditation, devotional chanting, and ayurveda [traditional Indian medicine],” says Bette Timm, head of alternative music retail promotion company Bette Timm Marketing.

As a product of the yoga and spirituality boom, leading chant artists such as Krishna Das and Deva Premal are enjoying album and concert sales rivaling artists in more mainstream genres.

Deva Premal

“Deva Premal has sold, between her four albums, over 750,000 units, which is not something to sneeze at in anybody’s world,” says Parmita Pushman, owner of White Swan Records, the label that released Premal’s second album in 2001. “The highest-selling Deva Premal album is her first one [on White Swan], The Essence, which at this point has sold about 300,000 units. And I imagine Krishna Das is up in the same numbers. With all the problems in the music industry, and with so many segments of the industry going down, this is one market that has been immune to that.”

The music performed by these artists is largely based on kirtan, an ancient Indian form of rhythmic call-and-response devotional chanting that creates an ecstatically meditative mood. While the paradigm is ancient and South Asian, some of the genre’s top performers express the mantras while drawing upon other musical styles. Das sticks close to the Indian tradition and also incorporates the harmonium, African percussion and electronic influences, while Premal employs ambient New Age style synths in her music. Jai Uttal, a GRAMMY-nominated kirtan artist, explores Brazilian rhythms on his latest album, Thunder Love, and MC Yogi has created a sensation by setting mantras to hip-hop grooves on his debut album, Elephant Power.

With the genre infusing a variety of musical textures, the audience has reflected both baby boomers and a younger demographic. “I go to a concert by Krishna Das or Deva Premal and half the audience is the older spiritual crowd,” says Terry McBride of NuTone Music, a label specializing in the yoga/chant genre. “But the other half are people who have heard this music in a yoga studio and they’re all 25 to 40 and about 80 percent female.”

Yoga studios are an important component to the genre. “When my partner and I started White Swan in 1991, yoga studios weren’t really playing music,” says Pushman. “Yoga teachers have become the radio stations for this music. They’re the DJs. And that provides a vital way to reach listeners, which is one thing that more mainstream labels lack these days.”

Yoga/chant CDs are also sold at other non-traditional outlets such as New Age stores and gift shops at meditation or spiritual centers. “The problem is that a lot of the sales don’t go through [Nielsen] SoundScan,” says Pushman. “So they get short shrift on the music industry’s radar.” And while digital sales are up across genres worldwide, CDs are still a major focus for the yoga/chant genre. “People aren’t buying the music for one song they love, but rather for an experience that fits their life, such as a yoga class or meditation,” says Pushman. “So they tend to buy whole albums and they tend to actually like buying CDs.”

Compared with pop music, “kirtan music clearly has a longer shelf life,” adds GuruGanesha Singh, founder of the Spirit Voyage label and manager of Spirit Voyage’s flagship artist Snatam Kaur. “As an artist like Snatam Kaur gets embraced by more and more people around the world, they’re going back and buying the whole discography. It’s not likely to go in and out of style.”

Live performance also plays a key role in CD sales. “I really see a huge difference between the artists who are touring and the ones who aren’t,” says Timm. “It’s really hard to sell CDs if an artist is not touring. Whereas those who are out touring consistently and have been doing it for a while are doing great.”

“We’re seeing consistent increases in attendance at concerts, especially over the last eight to 10 years,” says Singh. “We’ve been averaging audiences of maybe 300 to 400 in the U.S., 400 to 600 in Canada and 600 to 1,000 or more in Europe.”

The involvement of Nutone Music’s Terry McBride is a development that may help catapult the genre to a new level. As CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, architect of Lilith Fair and an instrumental force in launching the careers of artists such as Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies, McBride began attending yoga classes a few years back and became an avid yoga practitioner. He revived Nettwerk’s defunct world music imprint NuTone in 2008 as a new outlet for yoga/chant music, signing artists such as Bhagavan Das, Donna De Lory, Wade Imre Morissette, David Newman, Uttal, and Wah!

“What I see missing and what I’m going to work on over the next couple of years is a more mainstream touring circuit for this music,” says McBride. “We’re going to market this music in ways that it hasn’t been marketed yet.”

Perhaps his most adventurous plan is to create a Lilith Fair-style festival based around mantra music, yoga and wellness. “The initial thought for this would be sort of a half-day festival, like from noon till 10 at night,” he says. “It would combine spiritual music — someone like Krishna Das or Deva [Premal] — with a more mainstream musical artist like Michael Franti. And that would be combined with sessions led by some of the more well-known yoga teachers. The whole thing would be something that resonates with what today’s society is looking for, because there will be a lot of people coming to these events searching for something. And I’d love for them to find it.”

For all the artists involved, kirtan is a spiritual practice first, and a profession second. Newcomers should realize that it is by no means a fast track to stardom.

“Unfortunately some people do try to get on the bandwagon,” says Timm, “but it’s not really what’s in their hearts so it doesn’t have the right essence. But I think the music itself tends to weed those people out.”

So while the market for this genre will continue to grow in the future, it will most likely do so on its own terms. “You can’t force a flower to bloom any faster than it’s going to bloom,” says Singh. “It feels to me that this genre will grow at a slow and steady pace, like a good spiritual practice. We’re in it for the long term.”

(Alan di Perna has been writing about music for more than 20 years and is currently west coast editor of Guitar World magazine.)

Joy is Now Review – Yoga Journal May 2009

GuruGanesha’s latest release, Joy is Now, is an incredible album, and I was so excited to see the review in the most recent issue of yoga journal. 

Here is the review:

Joy is Now by GuruGanesha Singh and Snatam Kaur:

GuruGanesha Singh is best known as the guitarist for Sikh chant singer Snatam Kaur.  But on Joy is Now, GuruGanesha steps into the spotlight with a set of kirtan compositions that showcase his lyrical guitar playing and relaxed singing style.  On most tracks he alternates lead vocal lines with Snatam, an exchange that creates a winning contrast.  The compositions also leave ample space for improvisation.  Instruments like sitars, sarods, flutes, esrajs, and violins dapple the music with traditional Indian tonalities that twine with GuruGanesha’s guitar.

The songs are varied in mood and style.  “Peace Has Begun” is jazzy, while the title track is a study in blissful acoustic psychedelia that wouldn’t have been out of place on a late ’60s album by GuruGanesha’s longtime heroes, the Grateful Dead.  the final two selections, “Sat Narayan” and “Guru Ram Das Love Song,” are more vocally driven and closer in style to Snatam’s own albums.  On Joy is Now, GuruGanesha and Snatam offer an agreeable blend o fthe new and the familiar in teh world of kirtan, taking you deep into the quiet hear of devotion and meditative awareness. 

- Reviewed by Alan di Perna

 

Listen to Sound Clips from this album here:

Song Title	Length
1. Peace Has Begun	–
2. Hari Om	–
3. Joy is Now	–
4. Aad Sach	–
5. Sat Narayan	–
6. Guru Ram Das Love Song	–

Click Here for More Information and to Purchase the Album

Gurmukh in Yoga Journal

L.A. (Yoga) Story

Yoga teacher to the stars Gurmukh Khalsa steps out of the limelight.

By Samantha Dunn

Consider this a regular Tuesday afternoon at Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa’s Los Angeles home: The buzz of hummingbirds feeding in the lush foliage of the patio entrance seems louder than the traffic off Wilshire Boulevard, not more than a block away. Numerous pairs of shoes form a kind of haphazard edge around the patio, a sure sign that one of her Kundalini Yoga classes is in session. The front door opens with a tinkle of chimes and there stands Gurmukh, dressed in pure white Indian clothing from her turbaned head on down. So radiant is her smile and so frothy are her clothes that she conjures an image of the Good Witch of the East. While Gurmukh’s house may not be Oz, you’re definitely not in Kansas, either.

Two women file past her with a hug on the way to locate their shoes. “Have you met Julie and Melissa?” she asks, presenting everyone to each other with ill-contained glee—it’s easy to tell that introductions are one of her favorite things. Hellos and So-nice-to-meet-yous are made, then it’s time for See-you-agains. As she shuts the door Gurmukh says off-handedly, “Melissa’s a singer. She’s really good! I guess she’s getting popular, too.”

That’s when it becomes clear that Gurmukh is either a master of understatement or has honestly missed the fact that a few million fans already think Melissa (as in Etheridge) is pretty good indeed, if her Grammys are any indication.

Gurmukh rolls her eyes. “I am so clueless,” she says. “When Courtney first called I thought she was that girl from the show Friends that everybody always talks about. Then I had to ask my husband, ‘Who’s Courtney Love?’”

This may seem odd coming from a woman who has been featured in no less than the New York Times, Vogue, W, InStyle, Spin, and Rolling Stone as Hollywood’s most celebrated yogi, who has taught Madonna, Cindy Crawford, Al Pacino, David Duchovny, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M….Let’s just say it’s probably easier to name the Hollywood elite who haven’t walked through her door at some time over the last decade.

It all began with a phone call 10 years ago from David Duchovny’s manager who’d heard about Kundalini Yoga and wanted a teacher. Gurmukh ended up teaching a group of actors from “Twin Peaks,” including Sherilynn Fenn. She soon had entrée into the homes of directors, stars, musicians, and even a few political pundits for private one-on-one classes. “One phone call led to another, then another, and another,” she says. “I didn’t seek it. It just happened.”

This would seem like an ideal opportunity to influence the most famous trendsetters, who would then produce more enlightened work. Gurmukh says that’s what she thought too, but she realized no effect is ever that direct. “The students themselves weren’t getting all they could out of the experience by doing it alone. Too often I would come home and feel like I hadn’t done enough, because I didn’t insist on things I know in my heart would have really helped them,” she says. “I realized that if I teach 100 people in an hour and a half, I help the world more than if I teach just one, no matter who that one person is.”

So last year—despite the money and the glossy magazines—Gurmukh stopped giving private sessions, telling each of her high-profile clients that in order to experience everything Kundalini Yoga has to offer, they would have to participate in class. “It was the end of a chapter in their lives, but they understood,” she says. “On a very deep level they knew it was the truth.”

Gurmukh’s name, which means “one who takes thousands across the world ocean,” was given to her by Yogi Bhajan, the Sikh master who introduced Kundalini Yoga to America. “I know the name describes my destiny,” she says. But for a girl from the Chicago suburb of Downer’s Grove, finding her destiny wasn’t easy.

“There was something missing that I was always searching for,” she says. Her quest for meaning led her first to Germany, then back to Chicago, and eventually to San Francisco to study acting. At age 22 she married and had a baby boy, only to have her child die at 7 months old of a congenital heart defect. “I had no tools to cope with my grief or anyone to turn to,” she remembers. So she set forth alone on a journey to heal.

Her first stop was Mexico where she lived among the Oaxacan Indians, then Hawaii where she was taken in at a zendo. What began as a brief stop-over became a year of deep reflection: She meditated for seven hours each day, grew and harvested her own food, and led a contemplative life. With the blessing of the roshi, she made plans to go to Japan to become a Zen nun. But, as the old joke goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Then 28, she returned for what she thought would be a quick visit to California before going to Japan. While there she met an old friend. He insisted she go with him to an ashram he had heard about in Tucson, Arizona, because he believed God had told him to take her there. “I said, ‘What’s an ashram?’” she recalls with a laugh. The two loaded his Volkswagen bug and drove to Arizona, where they walked into a yoga class in session. Her friend left after a week, paid her first month’s room and board, and she never saw him again.

“I’d found what I had always been searching for.” The year was 1971. Gurmukh remembers those as exciting days at the ashram; Yogi Bhajan had brought Kundalini Yoga to North America just two years before, so the pioneers were immersing themselves in the fundamentals of the practice: Although Kundalini uses the traditional asanas, it is a very gentle form of yoga that incorporates some form of pranayama (breathwork), mantras (sacred words), and mudras (symbolic hand gestures) into every session. It is done with the eyes closed and focused on the pituitary gland, or “third eye,” to channel the kundalini, the “energy of consciousness.” “Without that constant flow of energy, you could not live,” Gurmukh says. More than an exercise, Kundalini Yoga is a comprehensive yogic system, incorporating a vegetarian lifestyle, healing techniques, and seva (selfless service to others).

For two years Gurmukh worked at the ashram and taught yoga at the University of Arizona and the state correctional facility, then she was called to work at the “mother center” in New Mexico. The five years she lived there were filled with personal turmoil, so Yogi Bhajan sent her to India where she stayed for four months praying, meditating, and doing yoga. Her spiritual turning point was a yatra (pilgrimage), where she trekked up 17,000 feet over three days to reach a mountain shrine. “It’s where Sikh scripture says Guru Gobin Singh was told by God to reincarnate to help the world,” she explains. “I took my wounds and healed them there.”

Her return trip to America included a stop-over in Los Angeles which has lasted 22 years. “I’ve always been on my way back to New Mexico!” she adds. She opened the doors of Yoga West, the first Kundalini Yoga center in L.A., where she served as director for six years. There she met her husband, Gurushabad. Married for 16 years, the couple has a 14-year-old daughter. Gurmukh also serves as director of Seva Corps of Sikh Dharma, a nonprofit foundation that provides educational grants to children, and is a founding member of Khalsa Way, an organization dedicated to helping people deliver and raise healthy children.

“Khalsa means ‘pure ones,’ so the object is to bring purity back to families,” she says. “We help mothers even before they conceive to have a meditative mind so they can transfer that energy to their children.” The turnout for her pre- and postnatal classes is phenomenal—local obstetricians refer expectant mothers to Gurmukh both for exercise benefits and for the mental and emotional rewards yoga imparts. “I believe the soul of Shannon, the baby I lost, was sent to help me. He came as my teacher,” says Gurmukh. “If I’m considered a good teacher, it’s because age and life experience have made me that way. Also, I think it makes a difference that I am a householder and a mother. I have experienced what everybody else has experienced. But I have found a way out of the pain.”

At the end of any class, Gurmukh serves Yogi Tea and cookies. It gives people a chance to “come back to earth,” she explains, and also a chance to get to know each other. Friday night classes, however, are followed by a complete vegetarian feast. “This is true yoga—union with yourself and with others,” says Gurmukh, who at the moment is doing several things at once, making sure everyone has a plate as well as introducing a single man to a single woman. (She confesses to a weakness for matchmaking: “I love it when couples meet at yoga class!”)

The standing-room-only crowd makes it obvious why she’s embarked on opening a new center, called “Golden Bridge: The Heart of Yoga,” just blocks from her midcity home: the need for more space. Her new studio is the latest addition to the 350 Kundalini Yoga centers around the world. “I am just one spoke in a great big wheel,” she says. “People have a longing to belong. They need places where they can love and heal together. So many people are searching, like I was, for something more, and they’re finding it in yoga and meditation.”

Gurmukh stands still for a moment to emphasize a point: “More than discovering yoga, I want my students to discover what Yogi Bhajan taught me: that we are spiritual beings here to have a human experience.” She smiles again, and says in a mothering tone, “Our birthright is happiness.”

Samantha Dunn is a freelance writer in Malibu, California, whose work appears in Shape, InStyle, Women’s Sports and Fitness, and Bikini. Her first novel, Failing Paris, was published by Toby Press.